Spirituality

Spirituality

Spirituality represents a powerful source sf comfort, hope, and meaning for more than 90% of the world's population . This psychological characteristic has also been associated with psychiatric disorders, making it very difficult to determine whether spirituality is an asset or a liability for long-term treatments and prognosis in mental health. Research in bipolar disorder has not addressed this issue thoroughly. One study found that patients‘ spirituality and strength of their beliefs was a better predictor of good outcomes in bipolar disorder than any other psychiatric comorbidity associated in the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ). Other descriptive data show that about 20-66% of patients with bipolar disorder rely on spiritual belief and practice their faith without negative impact on their affective illness . Females with bipolar disorder tend to evaluate their spiritual beliefs as a more important positive feature in their lives and the course of their disease when compared to men. Previous observational research has found other demographic variables such as age to be related to the strength of patients‘ beliefs and spiritual practices . Patients report influential relationship between their spirituality and the course of bipolar disorder in 14~37% of the cases . These who seek spiritual healing seem to have better outcomes (course of illness, mood swings or episodes) than those who do not seek spiritual healing (69% vs 42%). Limitations of these studies include cross-sectional designs, modest sample sizes, potential confounding bias, and in most instances no comparison populations .